+1: #220 Put First Things First

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optymyze plus one. We're officially on a roll with the seven habits of highly effective people we've covered. Habit number one Be proactive and habit number two Begin with the end in mind today. Habit number three Put first things first here's the short story Covey tells us that some things matter and other things don't. Highly effective people know the difference and they put first things first. As Goethe said, things things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least. Covey shares a handy Dandy four quadrant model to help us get clarity on what's really important. He organizes activities by urgency and importance so something can be important or not and urgent or not. In quadrant one we have things that are both urgent and important. These are fire drill like activities and unfortunately way too many activities fall into this category. We need to do a much better job of reducing the amount of stuff that shows up here or we'll be constantly stressed and burned out. In quadrant two we have things that are not urgent, but they are important. This is our magic bucket. It's where our real impact occurs. Unfortunately, most people are spending all their time reacting to stuff all day, every day. They don't spend enough proactive time doing what really matters. In quadrant three we have urgent but not important stuff. These are really just interruptions we want to identify and reduce. In quadrant four we have not urgent and not important stuff. This is pure time wasting stuff, surfing the Internet, checking your phone for notifications every 5 seconds, etc. Spend enough time here and you'll get fired. So if we want to put first things first, what do we need to do? Very simple but not easy. We need to prioritize the Quadrant two activities. How? Well, here's one easy way. Go back to habit number one of being proactive and go back to one number 201 of being creative before you're reactive. You simply can't Check your email or news feeds or social media notifications first thing in the morning and expect to be as effective as you'd like. Period. Do you Today's Question what little thing can you do to put first things first today? Get on that plus one style.

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